1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for supporting the preparation of papers and verifying the prepared papers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally speaking, it is not easy to write a sentence, which is easy for a reader to read. In particular, in a paper or report it is difficult to accurately write an assertion (conclusion) and a reason for the assertion without a leap in logic.
If a paper or report is not logically organized, the content will be difficult for a reader to understand. There is a possibility that a paper or report that is not logically organized will not persuade a reader or a reader may misunderstand the paper or report.
Therefore, most writers of papers and reports wish to improve their skill level in writing papers or reports. Thus, there are many publications on how to write a good paper or report and there are also many seminars and schools teaching how to write a good paper or report.
Most parts of the publications on how to write a good paper do not explain the logical structure of a paper and explain only the physical structure. The logical structure of a paper means the correspondence between a conclusion asserted in a paper and the grounds (reason) for the conclusion. The physical structure of a paper means the arrangement or how to arrange each element composing a paper (a verification method, a verification result, an interpretation, a conclusion and the like). For example, the physical structure refers to whether a xe2x80x9cconclusionxe2x80x9d should be written at the top or at the end.
Although there are many seminars and schools teaching how to write a good paper, there are few tools for a user to easily master how to write a good paper by himself/herself. Furthermore, there are few tools for supporting the preparation of a paper or few tools for verifying a prepared paper. In particular, there is no tool for supporting the preparation of a paper while verifying the logic of the paper.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method for supporting the preparation of a paper by judging whether a major reason is present or whether there is a contradiction and by introducing the logical structure of a paper while clarifying the correspondence between a reason and an assertion. It is another object of the present invention to provide a paper preparation supporting method that can be easily used.
The paper preparation supporting method of the present invention comprises: asking a user a question about an assertion of the paper or a reason of the assertion; analyzing an answer from the user to the question; asking a further reason to support the answer if the content of the answer is not judged to be self-evident; preparing a logical structure indicating a logic of the paper in which the assertion and the reason are related according to the answer; and displaying the logical structure.
The logic of a paper is generally composed of an assertion and a reason to support the assertion. Therefore, the logic of a paper can be clarified by collecting the assertion and reason of a paper from a user and visually displaying the assertion and reason. If a reason given by the user is not self-evident, a reason to support the reason is further asked. Therefore, no major reasons are missing in a target paper and there is no leap in logic.
In the method described above, the answers (assertion and reason) can be rearranged according to the arrangement type required by the user and the rearranged result can be displayed. According to this method, the user can freely modify the arrangement of elements composing a paper without changing the logic of the paper.
In the method described above, a hierarchical identification number for relating an answer that triggers a question to a new answer to the question can be attached to each answer and a logic structure can be organized by sorting the answers using the identification numbers as keys. According to this method, the hierarchical relationship between the assertion and reasons of a paper can be easily visualized.
The paper preparation supporting apparatus of the present invention comprises a unit asking a user a question about an assertion of a paper; a unit asking the user a question about a reason to support the assertion made by the user; a unit treating the reason as a new assertion and asking the user a question about a reason to support the new assertion if the reason given by the user is not self-evident; a unit preparing a logical structure indicating a logic of the paper based on the assertion and reason given by the user; and a unit displaying the prepared logical structure.
According to this apparatus, and similar to the method described above, both the lack of major reasons and the leap in logic can be avoided in a target paper.